"Who
doesn't want peace?" you might ask
yourself. But look around you: War and human rights violations are
everywhere. Fear
is a dominant cultural bond. Meanwhile, so many of us consent to this
aggression—when it is done by the government we think represents
us.

Why Peace is about our aspirations to our own
progression, to where peaceful and voluntary societal systems and associations
replace the machinery of aggression and coercion. Only
by interacting peacefully can we achieve a more harmonious, prosperous,
healthy, fair and tolerant society.

This
book is an exploration of aggression, and of the evolutionary (and
revolutionary) process to peace. Through the insights of men and women, from a
wide range of backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives, Why Peace presents stories of wars, invasions, and political
repressions—down to the most basic levels of
authoritarianism. These individuals
share mind-opening and inspiring personal experiences with
state violence: North Korean gulag prisoners, exiled journalists, soldiers at
war (and some who refused to go back), Colombian campesinos displaced by drug war fumigations, people violently
displaced by their government for private corporate interests in the Amazon, families
run over by war, victims of cluster bombs in Southeast Asia, Guantánamo
prisoners, a Cuban student denied the rights to speak and organize, and much more.

Also in this
collaboration are military officers, former state
officials, political prisoners, activists, economists, aid workers, and others.
Each has contributed to this work to help demonstrate
the philosophy, morality, and universal benefits of non-aggression and
protecting human rights. Seventy-eight people, from thirty-four
countries on five continents, share their stories here. Find out why they all came
to a similar conclusion: peace is best
for all and its time has come.